BOOSTER PACK in January, Xmas stuff, answers by Means

[Chrisax]

Friday with Means - December 12th, 2008

Another very busy week..I hate to start with bad news..but it is important we are all on the same page. This hard decision was taken Tuesday this week.

The Booster:

The booster is delayed. The new target release date will be the end of January.

We have suffered more than expected amounts of delay in the last few months (This has been my first full-health week for a long time..too bad everyone else was ill!). This has resulted in the new content only beginning to be "properly" tested by players inside the last few weeks. As much as I really wanted this content out before Christmas I think we can all agree that pushing out content before it is ready is a bad idea...let alone directly before holidays when there might be less people on hand to correct any unforseen issues. We are just starting to process and implement good player feedback regarding the new playfields and the new pvp tools. I want to see at least three stable, well tested versions of the content in its entirety before we release it. We are committed to releasing content "when it is ready" and not before. The feedback we have been given by the players has already been extremely helpfull...thanks for taking the time to help us make this better!

The extra time will also allow us to implement a few more features that we really wanted as soon as possible.

Like:

• 1. Visual timers on the shortcut bar for Perks and Nanos.(See screenshot at the bottom.) I've wanted this for a very very long time. (all hail Macrosun!)
  
  
  
  2. Reworking of Orbital Strike Mechanics. (More boom and less gloom.)
  
  3. Different models of Engineer PVP mine. ie: Snare, Nanodrain, Damage (knockback).

Christmas:

It wouldn't be AO Christmas without some new Treats for the season!

This year will see the Gingerbread Leets roaming the cities of Rubi-Ka handing out goodies.

Leet and Yutto Cookies, Yutto Gingerbread Tents, Snowball light pyramids will be available for all to help celebrate the holiday season.(Screens including the RL version of the Yuttos tents made by two of our designers Lindelu and Genele!)



Real Life version



Questions from this week:

Q: What is holding FC back from server transfers and/or server merges.

This is a complicated issue in AO for a couple reasons. Player cities and Towers. Players moved from one server to another would lose their towers and cities...if a true merge then EVERYONE would likely lose their towers and cities. Towers are available through combat and could be fought over, but player cities operate on a "I got here first" mechanic. The "I got here first" mechanic would be unfair to any new transfers to a server and not much fun for those who would lose their cities in a complete server merge. Rubi-Ka-1 is once again the default server for new clients which should stabilize numbers compared to RK2 over the next couple of months. I do not consider the populations of RK1 or RK2 to be low enough to consider the drastic action of server merges yet..especially with all there is for the players to lose (cities and towers). The general game population was up over the duration of November...and with the release of the booster and the upcoming engine upgrade I'm hoping that activity remains stable and some old friends come back to visit us to try out the new content and toys.

Our German server population is not what is should be at the moment...so we perhaps need to open dialogue with the players from that dimension on how they best feel the problem should be addressed so we can come to the best solution together.

Q: Thrown Grenades for Engineers.

No. All the other tools introduced with these two new mechanics are largely defensive. Engineers are not meant to be the "Charge in ahead of the Tank throwing aoe-grenades with special blockers up" class...I am sorry if some disagree. The ability to hold an area defensively is an incredibly powerfull tool..and should not be taken lightly. If the engineer community feels that mines are a horrible idea then clearly we haven't established a good dialogue to make sure our intentions are clear. This is our fault. Things have been busy and I am sorry it has been late in coming. I was hoping to have these complete for testing this week...but other serious issues unfortunately had to take precedence.

• Basic ideas for the engineer mines:
  
  AOE snares, Nanodrain and Damage(Knockback) mines triggered by hostile (other side) players passing by (or slightly over) a specific area. Invisible to opposing side..visible to ones own side. One mine can be planted at a time. Only one mine for a specific period of time (ie: one mine placed every 4 minutes. Mine triggered after 3 minutes. New mine can be placed 1 minute later.)

Feedback on this basic guidline would be appreciated. I'll be watching the engineer forums.

Q: Are the new nanos final? (I made this one up so I could answer it.)

No. I think we can all agree that there is significant tweaking and adjustment left. For example these will definitely be usable outside the BS. With the next update to test we should be able to have a better go at testing and balancing these new toys.

Thank you all again for the feedback!

Colin "Means" Cragg

[Chrisax]

So the booster pack is delayed till the end of January...

You wanted it for Christmas? Yes I wanted it too. (And FC's accounting and management wanted it also!) But before anyone starts a rant, I'd like to say it is a GOOD decision.

Yes, many times in the past, content has been released too fast in AO, due to deadlines pressure. We can name AI, SL (which are slowly unleashing their potential only now),... and AOI
itself that was released in beta condition with a ton of great ideas simply abandoned (and cough... AoC?!) .

As I explained on our forums, and also several times on org chat, Means has been badly sick; his family had issues too, and other people in the AO staff experienced a bad end of the year. And Means is introducing a big change in the new content policy: we will release stuff when it is ready. Here, for the booster pack, when three stable versions would have run on public test. For the graphic engine, when it works with enough additions to be great and when it has been made sure it can run on (relatively) old systems with no modifications or small ones.

In both cases, the opportunity was seized to implement more changes: for the graphic engine, new effects, new characters models, new trees and some redesigned world items, etc.; for the booster pack, the timers on the nanos icons, engineers mines, a rework of the Orbital Strike concept.

So, yes, it's boring to wait as we wanted our Xmas gift, but it's a good change made to FC's policy.

[Jimson]

It looks to me as they are useing 3dsman 5.1 for graphics XD that is good i use that in school it is like a 3 thousand doller program a produces amazing results

[Alphacenta]

It looks to me as they are useing 3dsman 5.1 for graphics XD that is good i use that in school it is like a 3 thousand doller program a produces amazing results

They're using Ogre 1.6...

http://www.ogre3d.org/

And that's opensource.

[Chrisax]

In fact, they use both... for the reason they are not the same thing.

Ogre is a realtime rendering engine. It's a tool that makes possible to display scenes, characters, and effects "instantly" (for a human being). It is used to create virtual worlds in which you can move and act at a normal speed. Nevertheless, Ogre is ONLY a part of the code of a game. You have to use it in your own code to create the rendering engine for your game. Some comercial engine offer more complete solutions but first, at a very high price (the Unreal engine starts at around 600 000 dollars iirc), and, second, are less flexible if you need to deeply customize them. For AO, the Unreal engine for example wouldn't be a good choice.

3D Studio (Autodesk 3DS max) is a modeling, animation, and photo-realistic rendering engine. It's not a graphic engine. With 3DS, rendering an image can take hours... even days, but the max quality is way above anything you can see in a game. Animations are not in real time: you can create a "movie" and watch it in real time, but creating it can take hours... or days.

See below...

The bad thing with Autodesk is software licenses are insane. A single license for 3DS max with all the addition you may want is more than 8 000 dollars (with the Particle Flow tool and RTE publisher for example).

[Chrisax]

This is 3DS Max....


Not photo added, all is rendering (except the sky).... this image took 1 week to be rendered (yes one week) in 2005





This picture (from opdigital, a Chinese rendering and modeling company), took 2 days quite recently





I assume you'd like this in a video game but NOT at 1 frame per week rate!